Photo courtesy of NASA

Orion, strapped onto a Delta IV Heavy rocket, took off from Cape Canaveral on Friday morning.

The spacecraft stood there gleaming on the launchpad as the countdown began, the numbers ticked off by a cool measured voice. On NASA TV, the audibly giddy voice of the announcer took over, his voice raised to an almost-shout. "Three-two one and lift off art dawn, the dawn of Orion and a new era of American space exploration."

Orion launched on Friday morning and kicked off the start of a new age in space exploration before it had even fully cleared the launchpad.

Despite the scrubbed launch on Thursday morning -- canceled due to high winds, a valve problem and some idiot on an unauthorized boat in the area that we still hate -- thousands of people around the world gathered to watch the second attempt to launch the craft on Friday morning.

Today the wind was good, the spacecraft was go for launch and there were no mystery boats screwing things up. NASA had a 2 hour and 39 minute launch window on Friday and this time everything clicked into place.

The Delta IV Heavy Rocket lit up and Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida was covered in plumes of flame. The Delta IV rocket lifted off the pad and jetted through the sky, and the whole thing was pure joy to watch. But the best part, for the Houston-minded at least, came in about 15 minutes after, once Orion safely hurling through space.

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Camilo Smith

A few hundred people came to a Third Ward town hall meeting to talk about justice and grand juries.

It was a largely black crowd with at least a third of the audience made up of white people and a few anarchists sprinkled in. They were there to share ideas, sign some petitions, and to vent about injustice in the Mike Brown and Eric Garner deaths.

Inside the packed El Dorado Ballroom in the Third Ward the shirt on a lonely hipster said it best: Murder Beats Not People.

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HPD

Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland

In a 30-minute in-depth interview set to air on KPFT 90.1 FM this afternoon, Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland acknowledged that the war on drugs has disproportionately hurt "young minority men," and that law enforcement attitudes on marijuana use are beginning to shift.

In a wide-ranging interview with Dean Becker, host of the "Cultural Baggage" radio show and a regular speaker with the marijuana legalization group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, McClelland also said the money spent jailing non-violent drug offenders -- it costs about $50-60,000 to house a single inmate for a year inside a Texas prison, he says -- would be better spent on drug treatment and prevention programs.

"Most of us understand, we do believe, those of us that are law enforcement executives, that the war on drugs, the 1980 drug policies, was a miserable failure, there's no doubt about that," McClelland said.

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Joe Kramer via Flickr

Before we get to the Best Bets, a couple quick comments on the college football coaching carousel...

Florida found their guy in Colorado State's Jim McElwain, and by doing so kept alive the streak of 1,143 straight schools who have fired their head coach and then gone and found a new head coach with the complete opposite profile of the ousted coach. Fired Will Muschamp, a former defensive coordinator with no experience? Well, let's get McElwain, a former offensive coordinator with head coaching experience!

The amazing bit of fallout from these firings (and really just a general trend) is the big money being offered to coordinators. Will Muschamp is fired and immediately (reportedly) offered seven figures to coordinate defenses for Texas A&M and Auburn. A steady gig, big salary, and a small fraction of the pressure as a head coach? Yeah, coordinator is where it's at.

Also....Nebraska....what the hell was that? Mike Riley? Really?

Ok, onto the bets....

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USAGC.org screenshot

Deal, or no deal?

Each year, the U.S. Department of State issues 50,000 green cards through the Diversity Immigrant Visa program, sometimes called the "green card lottery." It's free to apply, but a slew of online companies of dubious provenance offer to assist applicants for a healthy fee.

The State Department recommends avoiding them, which is something that Christine Buchhorn of South Africa wish she knew before a company operating out of a Houston PO box deducted more than a month's salary from her bank account before she knew what was going on. She reached out to us for help, and since we have a special place in our heart for multi-national companies working out of strip mall mailbox stores, we thought we'd check it out.

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There will likely once again be no Hall of Fame induction for Jeff Bagel

The new inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame will be announced early next month. So let's just get this out of the way now: Jeff Bagwell's name will not be one of the inductees. Craig Biggio's name will likely be announced, but Bagwell, the best player in Astros history, will be left out once again.

The Hall of Fame ballot was mailed out to voters last week, and it's a crowded ballot. There are 34 names on it, with 17 of those names (including Biggio and Bagwell) being players who were also on last year's ballot. Voters can only vote for a maximum of 10 players, and a player must receive 75-percent of the votes cast to be inducted -- Biggio missed by two votes last year. There were 571 ballots cast last year, and 50-percent of those ballots contained the maximum 10 names.

It's not yet known how many eligible voters will actually vote this year, but it's safe to say that 75-percent of those who vote won't be voting for Bagwell, who is in his fifth year on the ballot. There's been much speculation in years past about why Bagwell can't get the required number, most of that speculation centered on steroid rumors.

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Photo by Groovehouse

"We met as an organization this morning with all of our medical personnel, doctors, trainers. We came to the decision that in the best interest of JD is that we will place him on injured reserve and he will have surgery on his right knee. I will not get into the details of what type of surgery it is or when it is. I just respectfully ask you not to ask those questions." -- Bill O'Brien, Thursday afternoon

Ok, Bill. But honestly, there really aren't any other questions whose answers matter at this point.

The jagged rookie season of Jadeveon Clowney ended with a thud on Thursday afternoon, as the first overall pick's trip to Pensacola to see Dr. James Andrews led to the collective decision from Texans brass and the player himself to go back under the knife, "clean up" his right knee (O'Brien's words), and begin rehabbing for 2015.

Control, alt, delete. And hope for the best.

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Photo courtesy of NASA

The launch was held due to high winds, some valve issues and a boat.

NASA's first test launch of Orion, the craft that may one day carry astronauts to Mars had to be scrubbed on Thursday morning after a stray boat, high winds and a valve problem on one or more of the liquid-oxygen tanks forced each launch attempt to be pulled.

This was supposed to be a shining hour for NASA -- one of the space agency's biggest moments since the shuttle program ended in 2011 -- but the fates just would not line up. (And whoever was the dude with the boat, we are not your biggest fans right now.) That was kind of a bummer for the thousands of people all over the world who were hoping to see Orion launch over the course of the two and a half hour window launch, but people made do. While all the NASA people were busy looking serious, the space fans were having a fine and hilarious time of it on social media, particularly the Twitter.

Some people just wanted to help out any way they could, like Ed Hochuli's guns:

Ok guys, if you can't get those rockets working tomorrow, give me a call. I'll throw it up there. #OrionLaunch

— Ed Hochuli's Guns (@EdHochulisGuns) December 4, 2014

And some people -- perhaps those who really, really, really wanted to see Orion blast off, soar 3,600 miles away from Earth, make a couple of loops around the planet and then turn around and splash into the Pacific Ocean just off the California coast -- offered tried and true advice:

Turning it off and on again has not worked. Their new attempt to fix the issue is shaking it like a polaroid picture. #EFT1 #orionlaunch

— Next Launch (@nextlaunch) December 4, 2014

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Photo by Groovehouse

After reportedly getting several expert opinions on his injured knee, the Texans announced on Thursday afternoon that Jadeveon Clowney has been placed on injured reserve, effectively ending his rookie season.

O'Brien update on Clowney: We will place him on IR and he will have surgery on his right knee. #Texans

— Houston Texans (@HoustonTexans) December 4, 2014

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Photos courtesy of the Galveston Police Department

We've always thought those "Beware of Alligator" signs are obviously tongue-in-cheek warnings that are never meant to give notice of a real live alligator. Otherwise, every cluttered chain restaurant in the nation has some 'splaining to do about what they're housing in their back alleyways.

But on Monday, a Galveston Animal Control Officer stumbled across such a sign posted on the fence of a home on 47th Street and took it at face value.

Good thing he did.

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